Below Cold Mountain by Joseph Stroud
Jane Hirshfield recommends Below Cold Mountain, poems by Joseph Stroud: “One of the finest collections of poems I’ve read in years-intelligent, sensuous, moving, full of human insight.” (Copper Canyon)
Review
Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter
Don Lee recommends Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, nonfiction by Charles Baxter: “In nine brilliant essays, Baxter displays his characteristic wit and intelligence as he muses about the influences of culture and politics on the art of storytelling.” (Graywolf)
rev. of Dark Sky Question by Larissa Szporluk
Dark Sky Question Poems by Larissa Szporluk. Beacon Press, $12.00 paper. Reviewed by Susan Conley. In Larissa Szporluk’s startling first collection of poems, Dark Sky Question, winner of the 1997 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, one finds a fiercely independent voice mapping the geography of longing. Here the backdrop of a darkening sky is just…
rev. of All-Bright Court by Connie Porter
Connie Porter's first fiction is more a collection of related stories than a novel, and will seem like old material to readers who only glance at the jacket copy. The book is a tale of a black family living in the urban North and, because of its structure, is from a woman's perspective. But Porter's…
rev. of Between Silences by Ha Jin
There are many reasons to praise this extraordinary book by the Chinese poet Ha Jin. Among the poets of his generation, who came of age in the crucible of the Cultural Revolution, he is, I believe, the first to publish a collection not translated, but written in American English — spare, clear, unadorned. The poet,…
rev. of By the Sound by Edward Dorn
One of the things the novel can and often does do for its readers is to extend their range of sympathy, to make them see with a new clarity groups of people that might otherwise be forgotten except in statistical charts, and to make them feel that the individuals inside these groups partake of our…
rev. of Amazon One by M.F. Beal
M. F. Beal's long visionary story "Gold" was featured in the New American Review in 1971. That piece, along with others in earlier issues of NAR, the Atlantic, and the Paris Review, earned for her a considerable reputation, including mention in Gravity's Rainbow. Amazon One is Beal's first published novel, and will, it is to…
Billy Verité by Rick Harsch
James Alan McPherson recommends Billy Verité, a novel by Rick Harsch: “A portrait of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the human condition, in late twentieth-century America, from an absolutely original point of view.” (Steerforth)
Calle 10 by Danny Romero
Gary Soto recommends Calle 10,a first novel by Danny Romero: ” Calle 10is a novel of Chicano lowlife in Oakland. The main character is a dude named Zero, his name summarizing what this novel is all about. The writing is gritty. If you like chewing on the salty rocks of hard living, this is for…